


I Sing the Body Electric

by Benevolent_Atlas31



Series: The "Bucky Barnes is My Mom" Club [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Baby Tony, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, F/F, F/M, Hurt Tony Stark, Kid Tony Stark, M/M, Mother Hen Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Nerd Tony Stark, Parent Bucky Barnes, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Rhodey, Protective Steve Rogers, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2018-12-19 00:01:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11885643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benevolent_Atlas31/pseuds/Benevolent_Atlas31
Summary: He wakes up forty-something years in the future without his arm, his memories, or any idea of who or where the hell he is. The last thing he thinks he should be entrusted with ischildcare, but Bucky Barnes has stopped believing that whoever is running his train wreck of a life gives a damn about what he thinks of it.He really should start getting paid for this shit.





	1. The (Mis)Assignment

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Two semi-violent scenes are described here, so if that is bothersome to you, just skip this chapter, please, and go on having an awesome day. :)

"I am your new handler."

A woman — _The Wife_ , he remembers — stands in front of him, panting and bleeding a little at the temple. There’s blood on her, some of it's hers, and some, Bucky assumes, isn’t. Her long, brown hair is in disarray and her clothes are torn and dirty. She’s got one high heeled shoe and a flat one on, both caked in blood as well.

 _The Asset_ isn't yet allowed to speak, but Bucky is able to at least shake the head.

" _I am your new handler_ ," she repeats. "You are to take your orders from me and no one else. I—"

Bucky is able to maneuver his body enough to look at her, and he shakes his head again. “The Asset is already charged with a handler.”

He can’t say the name, because he isn’t programmed to do that, and he can’t ask for her help or ask her to _kill him, please, I’m a monster_ because he isn’t programmed for that either, so he just goes back to sharpening the edge of his knife.

He hears her uneven footsteps echo away down the concrete and steel hallway. He doesn’t know how long she’s gone for, but he knows when she returns because he can hear the sniffling and cooing of a baby.

"Here's the re-assignment," she says, and he hears the metal tray of weapons behind him clang unattractively, disrupted by something heavy crashing down on it.

He turns, and his handler's — his _former_ handler’s — head is staring back at him with a very neutral, if not stern expression.

She's right. The death of a handler (as rare as one is) should mean that he destroys the body and reports back to whatever base he woke up in. The issue with that was that his handler had destroyed that base and there was no body seen to be taken care of.

It made sense that he should be passed to the spouse in this case.

He looks up at her.

She's still breathing heavily and is hunching slightly over the bundle. He can see a tiny hand waving above the fabric, reaching towards the woman’s face, and he feels something in the middle of his body pull forward slightly, like he should walk. _Bucky_ wants to walk towards the woman, but the Asset isn’t allowed yet.

It’s not _relevant_.

“What are the orders?” he asks when she doesn’t tell him immediately. Usually, he gets a file or a list or his red book, meant for him to read in the privacy of wherever he’s told to go.

She blinks and stares at him like she doesn’t quite understand. “What?”

He drops the tension in his body, noticing some fear in her eyes. He doesn’t know how threatening he really looks like this, but she’s clearly come from a situation.

(Inside his head, Bucky wonders, sardonically, how calming carrying around the decapitated head of your husband must be in a place like this)

“What are the orders?” he repeats.

She shuffles the bundle and throws a look over her shoulder. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but, apparently, she doesn’t find it. She scurries inside then and kneels in front of him. He doesn’t know if it’s to keep his attention or because she’s too exhausted to stand, but either way, he doesn’t reach out to touch her and help her land softly. _He isn’t programmed for that._

“Your orders,” she begins, her tone wavering a bit. (There’s blood trickling down the side of her mouth, and that’s about when Bucky clues in that she might just be dying.) “are to keep my boy with you at all times. He is to be _safe_ —” She turns and coughs, a vile blackened red painting the concrete. “He is to be _cared for_ —“ This woman is dying, and it sinks in right next to the fact that there are gunshots ringing outside of his room and they are steadily getting closer.

“Soldier!” she snaps, raising a free hand to throw into his hair and squeezing.

He doesn’t react.

“Anthony Edward Stark is to be _loved._ ” she gasps out, thrusting the large bundle into his arms. “Do you understand your orders?”

He looks down at the bundle. The infant is swaddled tight in a thin, striped blanket underneath the bloodied, bulky fleece. The infant is small, or at least, it looks small compared to what it’s wrapped in. It has black hair and flushed skin, and looks as though it could have been born just hours ago.

The Asset — the _Soldier_ , because that's what she'd called him — didn't know much about infants aside from the rudimentary facts to keep one alive. Bucky, however, knew enough about babies to know that this one was much calmer and cognizant as he’d ever known they could be. The dark blue eyes seemed to be looking back at him with the all the scrutiny he was probably looking at _it_ with. 

The orders, themselves, were simple ones. 

This bundle was small enough to transport just about anywhere ( _You're going to have to settle somewhere, you idiot)_ , so he'd be able to keep it with him until the infant grew. The Soldier was more than capable of keeping the infant safe. Threats to it would have to be eliminated completely, and Bucky was just grateful that the bundle made for a small target. ( _Easy to hide and easy to track. You're gettin' somewhere, soldier— Hey, watch his head_.) He knew he could care for it. He knew it would need to be bathed and fed regularly. The Soldier could watch over it while it slept, and find time to recharge when they finally made it to somewhere relatively safe. 

His orders were simple, and yet . . .

_Anthony Edward Stark is to be **loved**._

She's gone when he looks up, and he doesn't have time to register any sort of suprise at her escape. There's an absolute chaos reigning behind him, and it's a wonder none of it has found it's way into his cell. He has the mind to turn around, but that's when he hears it. It shouldn't be anything special in the rain of gunfire echo around the compound, so, Bucky figures, it must have been coming from one gun.

Maria's Stark's gun.

And now that gun is silent.

Her blood is cooling on the back of his head and her son is reaching up to get some sort of hold on something that Bucky doesn't know on what. ( _His face? The world? Good luck with that, kid._ )

**_Loved._ **

__Yeah, he thinks he can do that one, too.


	2. Well-made Man

**_Anthony Edward Stark_ **  

 

> **_DOB: May 29, 1991 at 2:58 pm_ **
> 
> **_Sex: Male_ **
> 
> **_Weight: 7.0 lbs_ **
> 
> **_Allergies: N/A_ **
> 
> **_Illnesses/Ailments/Conditions:_ **
> 
> **_Jaundice; patient exhibited signs two days following birth. Treament: Light Therapy — succcesful._ **
> 
> **_Heart murmur; patient exhibited signs of a slight murmur in-utero. Treament plan: observe._ **
> 
> **_Notes:_ **
> 
> **_Patient did not cry or make sounds until three days after birth when being removed from his light box._ **
> 
> **_Patient had excessive difficulty latching and was switched to a bottle after seven weeks. Patient was switched to formula after four months._ **

 

Short and to the point, Anthony's smuggled birth record would probably prove to be useful someday. 

Today, obviously, was not that day.

Bucky peaked over the side of the baby cot, wondering for the fifth time how exactly he would justify his actions to another set of worried EMTs why he called them because his kid was doing _nothing_. Nothing, which was the same thing Anthony had been doing every day for a _month_ now, was going to drive Bucky insane. Not like he _wanted_ him to cry and scream at all hours of the night (memories of the Ward baby two doors down still gave him the chills) but he was expecting something more than coo-ing and annoyed grunts whenever Anthony wanted something. 

He didn't have a fever, Bucky was pretty sure a baby wouldn't be having a seizure for a month straight without showing any outward signs, and a stroke would have shown up on one of the many tests that he'd had SHIELD foot the bill for. Besides all that, the baby was always perfectly present, handing out looks and expressions that had Bucky wondering if his therapists had messed something up in his deprogramming and planted false memories there instead. 

(He wondered if you could really call it paranoia when all you had memories of was people being out to get you.)

He sighs and reaches into the cot, finally giving up the battle of trying to make Anthony sleep. "C'mon, baby," he says, shifting him a little so his head rests on Bucky's shoulder.

He still isn't comfortable having Anthony on his hip. When some of his memories from before HYDRA had returned, he was much more comfortable with the intricacies of caring for his charge. SHIELD hadn't been so convinced, assigning him an agent to live in the apartment they had given him. Nick was nice enough, but it was odd taking advice on how to hold a baby without snapping its neck from a man who looked like he snapped necks for a living. 

(Though, in that area, who was Bucky to judge?) 

He didn't remember a lot of his time on any HYDRA base or with any of his handlers, but there were two things he couldn't seem to scrub: the kills and Maria Stark. 

"I know television was rare in your day, but I'm pretty sure you know it's supposed to be on while you stare at it." 

Nick was nice _enough_. A little sarcastic shit, sure, but ultimately helpful in his pursuit of _Not Accidentally Killing Anthony Stark Because I'm A Goddamned Disaster_ which was all he was looking for in a housemate. 

"They were before my time," he says, trying to remember how he'd gotten from his room to the living room couch. "Baby wake you?" 

He knows he should stop asking questions that he knows the answer to, but it's easier to pretend this is all normal that way. He knows that Nick is always awake whenever he's awake. He's got a good hunch that SHIELD has cameras and recorders all over the apartment, he just doesn't know where. _Still_ . . .

Nick just shrugs, pushing off of the doorway and moving slowly to collapse on the armchair just across from him. "Was working on some letters for back home. Thought I heard something and came down to check."

Anthony had never made a noise loud enough to carry and SHIELD didn't have a way to head-shrink the fact that Bucky could walk across wood floors without making a sound.

"People still write letters?" he asks, mindlessly rubbing circles on Anthony's back.

Nick makes a vague gesture with his hand and settles more into the chair. "He alright?" 

Bucky sighs. "That's what they tell me."

"You think something's up?" 

Anthony squirms a little, pushing at Bucky's chest until he gets the hint that he wants down. He tries but gets as far as moving Anthony to his lap before the baby clings to his waist. Bucky leaves him there and lets him cuddle into his stomach. 

"No," he answers when Anthony settles. "I don't think they're hidin' anything from me. He just so . . . _different_ ," Bucky swallows. "I know that they'd tell me if something was wrong or they'd do something themselves, but he's _too_ different, sometimes. Folder says he's never cried before."

The dim light in the kitchen helps him see the way Nick's eyebrows furrow. "Ever?"

Bucky is sure Nick's seen the record but is also, equally sure he's probably referring to the fact that at only six months old, Anthony Stark survived whatever HYDRA put him through and his rescue came in a hail of gunfire.

He nods. "He gets fussy sometimes, especially when he sleeps. I know the doctors said he'd probably forget that night, but he doesn't cry _ever_. Can't get a sound out of him."

"Spooky," Nick admits. "But he's healthy. I've never had much experience with kids myself, but I think you'd be able to tell. He's a happy little thing." 

And Bucky has to agree with that. 

Mostly, Anthony is happy. He tends to giggle Bucky awake every morning from the bassinet and sighs himself to sleep, like he's still thinking of whatever woke him and is just reconciling with it. He loves to play with Bucky's hands and he loves to be read to. More often than not, he loves both of those things at the same time, which has caused Bucky to become very good at one-handed page turning. He likes his little walker better than he likes the weird, automated swing thing that Anthony's doctor had assured him would be therapeutic. He likes playing with (read: torturing) Bucky's hair, and though it's something of a hindrance whenever Bucky tries to be productive, it has the benefit of making him the person Anthony likes to be held by best. 

The sacrifices are not many. 

Anthony's not a fan of anything yellow. Bucky noticed it when they'd been brought to a SHIELD med-bay that first night and most of the things that had meant to comfort babies (rubber ducks, soft yellow blankets, and a yellow-orange rattle) only made him more anxious and squirmy. Anthony prefers bananas to peaches, but he'd eat every peach in the world to avoid touching any of the vegetables Bucky's tried on him. (Mashed potatoes at least got swallowed, and Bucky still thinks he has God himself to thank for that one.) He loves bath time and the one time that Bucky took him swimming in one of the SHIELD exercise pools he seemed to enjoy himself.

The only other miracle Bucky has asked for was that Anthony might _hold still_ for five seconds to help Bucky orchestrate a diaper changer that wasn't a godforsaken disaster. 

"How's the shrink?" Nick asks, keeping his eyes on Anthony. 

In all honesty, he _was_ getting better. The Winter Soldier wasn't gone, but he was stuck firmly in the backseat of Bucky's consciousness. He got pissy sometimes, like when Bucky let anyone walk behind him for an extended period of time or when he had to go to back to the SHIELD HQ for his weekly check-up. He'd only ever hurt two people since Bucky'd been back in control: some random woman who had taken Anthony away in the med-bay, and Nick, once, when he had woken up to the man standing over Anthony's bassinette. Bucky may have been mostly in control of the two of them, but the baby was still his mission, and with no handler to take it out of him, he would just have to go with it. 

Bucky's sure this is part of what Nick has to include in his weekly report — making sure Bucky wasn't faking any of that progress with the head doctors — so tries not to take offense, smiles, and says, "It's going alright." And then, "They ever make you see one?" 

Nick makes another one of those so-so gestures with his hands. " _They_ didn't make me, but my handler did." 

He tries not to feel cold. "SHIELD gives out handlers?" _But everyone said—_

Bucky feels a hand on his shoulder, followed by a tight pressure and then release. "Not like what you're thinking." Nick's voice is softer than it's ever been. "Our version is a little different. One agent in the upper divisions gets assigned a dozen grunts, handles their missions, and their paperwork."

To be fair, that's exactly what Bucky's thinking, but logically he knows that they probably had less Chinese water torture. "Who's your handler?" 

"I don't have a handler anymore," Nick tells him. "I _handle_."

"You handle," Bucky repeats, something like shock in his voice. He _knows_ what "handler" means, but he'd been _stupid_ enough to think—

Nick nods. 

"Are you handling me?" 

If he didn't know better, he'd say that Nick is offended, with the way his mouth pulls tight into a grimace. He doesn't appear ruminate, and his expression melts back to something more neutral. "I'm handling him." He points to Anthony, and something flickers across his face quick. "Officially, he was assigned to me, but he's something of a family friend."

"I'm handling him." Nick points to Anthony, and something flickers across his face quick. "Officially, he was assigned to me, but he's something of a family friend."

A family friend? "Didn't know you two were so close."

Nick does glare at him, then. "You could say I knew his parents. Howard Stark paid my goddaughter's way through college, and Peggy Carter was—"

"Peggy Carter?" 

Nick freezes. His eyes snap to Bucky's, wide, and searching for something. Bucky's confused, but the importance of whatever Nick is concerned about washes over him too. The only disruption in the moment is Anthony fussing a little in his lap, which dies down the moment he starts patting his back. 

"Something you remember?" 

He thinks so. Sometimes Bucky feels a little ancient. His bones ache in places that he knows they shouldn't and he knows things about a world that looks nothing like this one. When the memories from before HYDRA come to him, they're completely alien to what he knows now. He hasn't actually seen his file, so he doesn't know how long HYDRA'd had him for, but with the rudimentary, crash-course history lessons he'd been receiving with every question about appliances, it must have been a while. The world that came to him in pieces didn't have electric can openers, or mobiles, or compact discs. The world he remembered was hungry and small and dirty and a lot harder to live in. 

_Peggy Carter_

The name sounds familiar. He doesn't see a face, but he sees brown, shoulder-length waves against a stunning red dress and equally stunning red lipstick.

He doesn't think this counts as remembering, though, so he shakes his head. "Almost," he tells Nick. "Did I know her?"

"A little," Nick sighs. "You had a mutual friend." And then, "She's the kid's godmother."

He was _not_ briefed on that. "Does she want to see him?" Bucky doesn't know if he likes the sound of that. SHIELD's been letting him pick and choose who gets near him and the kid, and mostly he's been alright. Having Nick around helps, but he can't help but watch every move of the agents they send sometimes.  

"If she knew he was alive, she'd want to see him," he answers simply, looking a little tired. It's a statement and nothing more. An offer, maybe, but Bucky knows that he needs to be cleared before he's let out to make friends. 

Something doesn't sit right with him. "She thinks he's dead?" 

"Everyone does," Nick yawns. "The Starks went missing four months ago, and their official status is 'presumed dead'. If he ever wants to take over Stark Industries, or if you decide to send him to school, SHIELD is more than willing to deal with the publicity. For now, he's dead to the world."

Bucky swallows. "Does he have any other family?" 

"He's got some scattered around Europe. His mother's side, from what I can remember. Howard had never been very forthcoming with his family history, but they did have a butler that I heard the kid was pretty attached to." When Bucky cocks an eyebrow at that, Nick continues. "I didn't know them for long, but from what I remember, Maria was not the maternal type."

Bucky feels a little flare of anger at that, followed by an irrational urge to defend Maria Stark. "She seemed alright to me."

Nick's face still keeps the tired look, but there's a twinge to it. Whatever it is that's bothering him, it doesn't disagree with Bucky. "She wasn't a bad mother, from what I saw. It was clear that she had never expected this sort of thing with Howard, but it happened, and I'm sure they did the best they could."

"I know that she's dead." Bucky says. "I saw it."

"We recovered the bodies. Maria and Howard Stark are officially dead."

He considers this. He looks down at Anthony, trying to feel some sort of sympathy for the boy. He's an orphan, now, being raised by an ex-assassin and an underground government agency. He would never be normal, whether kept in the back pocket of SHIELD or released into the world. He would never think of the world with an open sort of curiosity Bucky assumed most children had.

One that he could not remember having.

And he tried to feel sad about that. He tried to feel some sort of pre-regret about his shortcomings in raising Anthony, but couldn't seem to conjure it. Maybe he would never remember himself beyond a name and a particular set of skills, but _dammit_ if he couldn't do right by this kid. 

Anthony hiccups in his sleep, and that seems to settle things.

* * *

"You can argue with me all day, but I will not be getting your apple juice this time."

Baby lets out an indignant whine and slams an open hand on his tray.

Bucky cocks an eyebrow. "Do you really think that's going to help you get your way?"

He gets an equally defiant look back. "Juice," Anthony states simply, pointing at Bucky. He knocks his hands together with his fingers coming to a sloppy point when they touch. "More." 

Unfortunately, Bucky can't help but smile at that, which lets Anthony know that if he tries just a little bit harder, Bucky'll give in and get the sippy cup off the ground. 

Anthony has taken to signing like he was born for it. Prefers it to speaking, almost, which had been worrisome for a time, until Bucky had started introducing other advantages to the spoken word. (Speaking's the only way Anthony would be allowed to have cheerios before bed, which was one of the only rules kept faithfully.) Bucky didn't speak much himself at first, but he made sure to push it onto Anthony, keeping him around Phil as often as he could and trying to make sure the other agents talked to him and asked him questions when they had the time. 

Nick leaving them was hard. He'd been informed that it hadn't been up to Nick, that it was probably inevitable from the beginning, and that they'd more than likely have some sort of rotation going until Bucky was cleared and fully deprogrammed. It had something to do with Anthony's development, they said. Something about him making attachments to agents whose job it _was not_ to follow a kid around for the next eighteen years and play some sort of pseudo-parent to. 

After reading his personal file, Bucky understood perfectly well who the agents were here for. 

He'd like to believe that it doesn't matter.

Their new keeper is a kid, just a few years younger than what Bucky looks. Phil's stern and quiet, giving off a much more authoritarian energy around others than Bucky would ever imagine possible for a guy that eats gummy bears for breakfast and lets Anthony drool on his tie during nap time. He's a staunch professional, still addressing Bucky as 'Sir' or 'Sergeant Barnes' even after two months of Bucky begging him not to.

It's Anthony who always seems to break him. 

Sure, Phil starts every morning standing on the fringe of any room he's supposed to be in. He's still too fresh from his training to be really good at blending in with the walls, but he tries. He carries himself with this thinly-veiled nervous energy. Whenever Bucky catches him in the corner of his eye, he's always looking at Bucky like he's trying to convince himself of something. And yeah, from his file, he knew he was a minor celebrity back in his day, but this look is intimate. It's _personal_ in a way that he can't really place.

But Anthony . . .

There are no pretenses with Anthony. 

Anthony'd had the flu the week of the switch. Nick had left the day they'd noticed a fever approaching, a mysterious call from HQ demanding that he abandon his post and return immediately. Bucky hadn't thought much of it right away, too focused on preparing himself and the apartment for when Anthony's on-coming fever broke. (He had put a fiver he didn't have on it only take a half day, and when Nick had asked for his reasoning, he'd off-handedly claimed that he'd always been good at telling with these sort of things.) He'd just laid Anthony down for a nap when Phil showed up, claiming to be a temp. If he hadn't learned that only SHIELD personnel were allowed in the apartment complex (which was information that he may or may not have gathered from his stolen, personal file) then maybe he would have held a knife to Phil's throat or shoved a gun at his forehead or something. Instead, he tiredly asked for the man's badge and the official transfer papers. 

He pretended that he didn't feel a sting when he saw Nick's signature at the bottom and simply offered Phil something to drink. 

(He'd declined.)

Bucky lost some time after that. He remembers hearing some fuss on the monitor and muttering something about taking Anthony's temperature again, but then there's just some bit of nothing, and then Bucky coming back to himself in the kitchen with his hands under running water and Phil's voice crawling in the under-current. 

He'd gotten Anthony out of his crib and held him for the three hours Bucky had just been . . . _lost_. He'd read him books and sang him songs, and when Bucky entered the living room, finally, he'd been telling some sort of story that Baby had already fallen asleep to. 

"You should work on that," Phil had said, tucking Anthony's head under his chin. 

"Not much you can do for crazy," Bucky answered, but he hadn't been exactly sure about that.

He knew about the nuthouses in his day, and about how no one ever returned from those quite the same way. He remembered getting shocked to keep him in line, and sometimes after missions if he would ramble during his reports. Other than that, he knew nothing of what they would do to him if he walked into one of his sessions and said, "Yeah, sometimes (like when I'm making breakfast for that infant you guys trusted me with) I completely freeze up, forget who and where I am, and then I can't remember it afterwards. Anything you can do for that?" 

It probably wouldn't go very well. 

They'd probably try to take Baby away from him. 

Unacceptable. 

* * *

Bucky is long past his days of assuming something is wrong with Anthony everytime he misses a developmental marker, or takes an alternative route to get to one.  

It would turn him gray, no matter what his serum had to say about it.  

He decides this, mostly, when he walks into the Playroom to see the familiar mess of brown curls bent over a giant silver box and hears some sort of inhumane screeching coming from it.  

Bucky sighs. "Who gave him the microwave?"

An indiscriminate group of people surrounding the scene who quickly scatter as Bucky enters. Normally, it would amuse him. Now, however, after three weeks straight of nightmares and (yet another) unsuccessful attempt at removing his triggers . . .

He manages to catch one of the uniformed runaways by the collar. "You." He tugs them back around so they — _she_ — is standing in front of him without blocking Anthony. "What is _this_?" he asks, gesturing to his boy who is, notably, happy to ignore the two of them for some smaller, rectangular box on the microwave. 

She's staring at him with most of the whites of her eyes showing. "I, uh, I _wasn't_ — I mean, I _would_ , but it wasn't in my papers, you see, and I know how particular Sergeant Barnes is with— I know that he doesn't want—" She blinks, finally, and takes a deep breath. "I just wanted to see him _work_ , sir."

 _'Sir'_? Bucky looks down at himself while she catches her breath and finds himself without his badge. Reasonable that she wouldn't know who he was without it. Bucky hadn't meant to, but having his own apartment allowed him to become something of a recluse in SHIELD's care. He only had to see his therapists, Anthony's ( _his_ ) caretaker, and Anthony, and two-thirds of those people were usually found in the apartment, anyway. (There's a nudge at the back of his head to really let her fry for this, but he ignores it, and, instead, let's her down gently and smooths the collar a bit.)

He goes with something she might be able to answer with the limited vocabulary she still has. "You wanted to see _who_ work?"

"The Stark kid, sir," she says, sneaking a glance at Anthony over her shoulder. "Phil talks about him all the time and I've seen some of his training footage—"

His stomach rolls. "Training footage?"

She seems to forget herself a little. "I guess we don't call it that for normal kids, huh?" Bucky's body loosens, but not by much. "Uh, his time in the Playroom, sir? And with the trauma counselors. He's not a verbal one, but he loves to _work_." 

Which is true. If he'd met a four-year-old before HYDRA, he certainly didn't remember it. However, he had some sort of an inkling that they weren't supposed to have power tools in their playtime kit, and it probably wasn't wise to read them theoretical physics books before bed if they continuously insisted on dropping heavy machinery off the top of your apartment building. However, Anthony's "experiments" had never been at the risk of causing harm to himself before. 

This, Bucky felt, was different. 

But the girl isn't done. "I mean, Phil talks about him all the time. I thought it was all myth, you know? Breakroom talk? But he's the real deal, and he's _gorgeous._ " And then: "His _brain_ , sir! His _brain_ is gorgeous!"

(Racecars. Bucky distinctly remembers Tony taking about racecars about a month ago, or something. That was probably a good first sign.)

"Who _are_ you?" 

"Danvers, sir. Trainee Carol Danvers."

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. She very much looks the part of a trainee of _something_ : small, blond, smiling. Nervous now, but he could see all the optimism and hope shuffling out of the top of her and waiting to come out. 

But SHIELD? She looked too . . . _soft_.

"How old are you, Danvers?" 

"Seventeen, sir." She seems to sense his observations, because she adds, "I took a placement test straight out of high school at the request of Ex-Director Carter, and she approved me."

_Carter?_

. . . _Oh_.

. . . _Oh **shit**_. 

"Peggy Carter?" 

Danvers nods slowly with a small smile forming. "The one and only. I used to live on the same block as her niece, apparently. Ex-Director Carter couldn't hire me or anything, but I know she's pretty hard to ignore." Danvers shrugs and looks pointedly at Bucky, like he should know what the hell she was talking about. "Strictly speaking, this is nothing more than an unpaid internship for me."

He let his eyes fall to her holster and throwing knives. "Do most unpaid internships involve so many deadly weapons?"

(His did, anyway.)

Bucky looked back at Anthony again, only to find the boy looking up at him with a very serious look on his face. It was a cross between his thinking face and his sad face, and it had Bucky moving towards him without a thought. "You got something to show me?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. Aside from being almost totally stripped, the microwave looked much the same as any other microwave would under the circumstance. There was no wild, new machine made, and somehow that was worse. 

Anthony nodded, walking to Bucky and grabbing his hand. "This," he said, pointing at the skeleton. 

It . . . twitched. The shiny silver box at the back (which looked mighty important) had some rusted cog attached to it and it was giving pathetic, jilted spins every few seconds. It didn't appear to be doing much, but the fact that it was doing anything at all was enough to cause a swell of pride to push against Bucky's rib cage. 

"Robot," Tony grumbles, picking up the wrench and chucking it at his creation. It shifts away, groans, and the rusty cog starts turning the other way with even more pitiful jolts. "Almost."

Bucky ducks down and takes a good look at the thing. It's got promise, he thinks. Pithy though it is, it came from his kid, and his kid can't even tie his shoes yet. He's always known that Tony was brilliant. (Scarily so.) He's always known that it would be criminal to keep Tony locked up, experimenting with microwaves for the rest of his life for fear that HYDRA would find them, even with the protection of SHIELD. He's always known that someday, he'd have to put the reigns in Tony's hands and let him decide what he was going to do with his life, and that that decision was probably going to include fancy, private schools and a string of creations so complex, anybody with half a brain would be after his Anthony before he picked a major. 

He squints. "An almost robot, huh?"

Anthony nods with a pout on his face. "Bad," he says dejectedly, glaring at the ground.

Bucky shrugs, trying to keep his posture and his face neutral. "I think it's pretty good, baby."

"Good?" Anthony perks up at that, turning from Bucky to see the machine. The look on his face is pure wonder with a flicker of hope. He looks at it as if it is in a new light, like he's never seen the thing before. He seems to fidn whatever he was searching for in it, and turns back to Bucky, expectant. 

Bucky nods. "Perfect." he says, and it really is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will probably edit later. How'd I do?


	3. The Body Itself Balks Account

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is mostly about the plot. If you're not in the mood for a slightly (read: heavily) depressing, jumbled, down-hill slide for papa!Bucky and baby!Tony, this chapter can kind of be skipped. You may miss a few things you might be confused about later, but it'll essentially be explained and talked about in other chapters. You won't be missing too much! This is kind of sad! Be warned!
> 
> (P.S. this is our last chapter of baby!Tony and Papa Bucky.)

"I can only help you if you talk to me about it, Sergeant Barnes."

His therapist, Laura, reminds him of something he'd read in a Vonnegut novel recently. He'd lost the page weeks ago, though he remembers dog-earing it before one of his sessions to show her. When he got there, it must have straightened itself out. That, or it was another one of his Episodes, but he didn't like to dwell on it too much. ( _It wasn't like the time you left the stove on before going to a session. Not even as bad as forgetting you left Anthony in a bathtub for 45 minutes you **absolute** —_)

She's a kind woman, maybe. Of course, all therapists are more or less paid to be kind, but she's always so gentle in the way she tries to take him apart. When she takes note of something she uses it to her advantage as discreetly as possible. (In one of the few sessions Bucky actually spoke, she was burning a jasmine and honeysuckle scented candle and now her office always smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine during his appointments.) She doesn't ask too many nonessential questions. She lets him ramble, but only when it's verbalized and not something rolling around in his head, left to grow like mold on bread in a cupboard. 

She's an unusually tall woman, he thinks, but aside from that, there was nothing substantial about her. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown trench coat, and skin-pink lipstick. She never wears heels to work, but has a pair tucked under her desk. She wears expensive clothes that look cheaper than they are. Thick, cable knit sweaters with triple-digit tags left on them. Soft throw blankets thrown over her couch and her chair handcrafted in countries even _he'd_ never been to. The heels she never wore were easily worth three hundred dollars. The perfume masked by all the scents that comforted her clients wasn't even sold commercially — some Egyptian vendor had an Angolan kid from South Carolina hand-deliver it to her in the states every four months. 

_She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education._

That's the one. 

"Sergeant Barnes, if you would like a new therapist—"

"I don't _need_ a new therapist."

"If you would feel comfortable talking to someone else—"

"I wouldn't."

"Maybe if you would allow me to try other methods of therapy, I could—"

"No."

A sigh. 

She was full of those, too. They were never resigned or disappointed. They were breathy, rebellious little things that existed like tiny bubbles, sucking the air out of the room. 

"Sergeant Barnes," she says, her tone edging on weary but not quite there yet. "While I don't mean to pressure you, I feel the need to remind you that you only have eight mandatory sessions left."

He nods. "What happens after that?"

She rubs at her temple with her pen. "Well, nothing technically  _has_ to happen, but I get the feeling I won't be seeing you in my office again after that eighth session."

Bucky shrugs. "I've done thirty-two other sessions. They told me I'd only have to do twenty with the deprogramming."

"That was with the original projections," she agrees hesitantly, like she thinks she's upsetting him. "Things have changed, Sergeant Barnes. You know this."

Bucky grimaces and sets his jaw. "I'm not moving fast enough."

Laura shakes her head and visibly tries to hold in some tortured noise. "You are going at your own pace, and that is perfectly fine." She tilts her head and offers him a small smile. "We all know how hard you've worked, Sergeant Barnes. You've come a long way."

He wants to ask her if it's good enough. He wants to ask if his best is going to be able to keep everything together and get better and give Anthony everything he deserves, but he knew he's going to get the same answer and another sad smile if he does ask. He wants to ask her if they're going to take Anthony away, but he's pretty sure that even if she were able to disclose that information, she wouldn't.

(He's not sure if he wants to know, in the end, if there's nothing he can do about it anyway.)

* * *

_Right, right, left._

He knows he has nothing to offer a child. He knows this is a temporary thing.

"Because you won't let us examine it, we don't really know how that arm works."

_Knee tucked, leg extended, thrust._

Their situation was made to be something to help Bucky cope. _Of course_ they would never let someone like him keep a kid. 

"Everybody in medical and biomedical engineering is currently refusing to work with you after your little outburst last week."

_Right, left, left, right. It'll throw you off your rhythm but you'll be alright._

It's for the best, really, but some part of him wants nothing more than to rip the whole world apart. "Basically, what I'm saying, is that if you break that arm, I can't guarantee you'll get another one."

"Basically, what I'm saying, is that if you break that arm, I can't guarantee you'll get another one."

_Look at the kid carry the fight._

Bucky drops his hands, takes a deep breath, and throws a look towards the door. He isn't disappointed by the sight of Nick Fury leaning on the training room doorway, arms crossed and wry smile etching itself into his face. The years absent between them only seems to have aged Nick where it counts ( _his eyes are more sunken in and look much heavier, his mouth looks unnatural, he's got sunspots but they only seem to make him darker_ -)and not in a good way. 

Bucky wants to speak but feels like he's forgotten how. 

Nick raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, assessing. "Isn't it past your bedtime?" 

Bucky's frown deepens. He can feel an itch on the back of his tongue, and wonders if that might be the words he's looking for. He hopes they're something witty or something smart or something that sounds like him at all. ( _He doesn't get many of those these days. He's not about to let Nick know that, though. Or, at least, he hopes he isn't._ ) 

"No," he says. 

_Close enough._

Nick shrugs. "I'm not your babysitter anymore, so it's none of my business." (Bucky doesn't know if this is true, but he hopes so.) "They find a good home for your stray, yet?" 

 _That_ has his interested piqued. "What do you want, Nick?" 

Nick smirks. "Hello to you too."

It feels old. This loaded exchange between the two of them where Nick smirks and Bucky comes out of it knowing about as much as he did going in.

Bucky doesn't know how clever he was before HYDRA. He remembers, mostly, nothing of what occupied his head before it was filled with missions, and weaponry information, and all the ways known to kill a person and make it look like an accident. He's more Bucky than the Soldier these days, but he isn't as quick as he used to be. 

This exchange feels old, and he doesn't like it. 

Nick comes farther into the room, side-stepping abandoned mats, weights, and practice dummies. Bucky has an aborted urge to apologize for the mess but thinks better of it when he remembers that, while it's true Nick's climbed quickly up the authoritarian ladder of SHIELD, this place is no more his than it is Bucky's.

"I came to talk about Stark Industries," he says, sitting on the edge of the boxing ring closest to Bucky. "What do you think?"

Bucky turns to him. "He's five."

Nick nods. "Yeah, and the tutors and the babysitters are all telling me that he's building circuit boards and nanobots." Nick smiles fondly and shakes his head. "He's a prodigy, is what he is."

"You said I would get to decide. You said, when the time came, _I_ would get to decide how this would happen."

Nick nods again, slower this time — decisive. "That was before circuit boards and microwave robots, Barnes. He has potential, and you're _wasting_ it." It all sounds very accusatory when he puts it that way. Bucky doesn't know whether that's because it's supposed to sound like that, or because it's convenient for Nick. 

He decides it doesn't matter.  

"I'm protecting him," Bucky insists. "Once people know who he is, do you think anybody else is going to spare him that courtesy? I'm doing this for _him—_ "

"For _you_ , you mean?"

Nick is still planted on the edge of the ring. Nothing in his posture indicates a lunge, but Bucky is ready for it. His arm lags a bit, these days, but he's got literal decades on Nick. He has the Soldier; Nick is alone. 

He _is_ the Soldier; Nick is _nothing_. 

It's a very simple equation, in Bucky's eyes. 

"It's not **_safe_**."

Nick looks sympathetic. His posture straightens out, but he keeps his movements projected and his arms open. "Barnes," he starts, keeping his tone neutral. "The HYDRA headquarters you were being held at was one of the last three that were actively a threat. We found and destroyed the others a year and a half ago." Nick takes a moment to run a hand over his eyes and sigh. "Besides, everyone has assumed the kid was dead for the last four years. There is no threat to his life now."

Bucky barks out a laugh. "And you don't think there will be? You go and make that announcement: 'Hey, not only is the heir to one of the wealthiest fortunes _alive_ , but he's _brilliant_ and will maybe be ready to start producing by the end of the ten year quarter!' He'll have targets on his back before you can finish the press conference!"

"Obviously we were going to go at it with a little more tact than that—"

Bucky is starting to feel a familiar pressure behind his eyes. His ears are buzzing, and he can barely hear himself over the noise. "And then _what_? What's your endgame here? It's not like he has anything to inherit, anyway. It's not like they'll just let him walk in and start running the place!"

"They will, actually."

Bucky blinks. (The pressure is only increasing and he knows what this means _and he knows what this means and it's not good he needs—_ )

"What?"

Nick sighs and shakes his head. "Look, that's not important right now, okay? I came here because of what I promised you." Fury stands, slowly, keeping his distance. "You _do_ have a say."

Bucky shakes his head. "Don't bullshit me, Fury."

"You have a say . . . You have a say _for now_. However, Anthony will have a say _—_  along with his care providers and the Council _—_ once a proposal is made."

( _It's all fire and feedback behind his eyes._ ) " _Fuck_ the Council!"

Nick rolls his eyes. "Barnes, don't be unreasonable about this."

But he doesn't know the difference anymore. His life . . . His whole self's been consumed by Anthony, and he doesn't know what _is_ and what  _isn't_ anymore when it comes to him. (Anthony sneezed the other day and Bucky felt like the whole world was about to collapse in on itself.)

It's that, and it's the thought of Anthony having a part of himself that Bucky doesn't have access to _—_ a part that Bucky can't _protect_.

 _(He is to be **safe**_ —)

"He doesn't speak." He's grasping at straws here. "He can listen well enough, but he doesn't speak."

Which is as true as it isn't.

Nick shrugs, and another part of Bucky cracks. "He doesn't need to speak if he knows how to write." And then a pointed look. "I know you're teaching him sign language, and that'll be good enough until we get him into some intensive speech therapy."

"What if he doesn't _want_ intensive speech therapy?"

"He'd have to have it even if we didn't absorb him into a gifted program."

"What if he doesn't  _want_ to be absorbed into a gifted program?"

Straws. 

"Barnes," Nick starts slowly, and Bucky feels some petulant satisfaction at the vein pulsing at his temple. "This talk? _This_ was a courtesy. I'm simply telling you about things that are going to happen. They won't start happening tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, okay? You have time. We're going to let him be a kid for as long as we can, but that has limits. His brain will do some wonderful things, and we can't have you or anyone else compromising that." Nick shoots him another pointed look. "We especially can't have you causing us undue trouble in the mental state you're in."

Bucky feels a swell of cold wash over him and suddenly—

"You have your orders, Soldier." 

_What are the orders?_

"We'd hate to see anything break up such a happy little family."

_He is to be **safe** —_

_He is to be **cared for** —_

_Anthony Edward Stark is to be **loved**._

He is cracking. 

* * *

"Apple?"

Anthony tucks his fist into the corner of a frown and twists it. His eyebrows are pinched and his expression is rigid as his eyes bore into Bucky's face. "Ah."

Bucky shakes his head and shakes the fruit again. "Apple." He punctuates by setting the apple down on Anthony's plastic table and pointing. "Apple."

Anthony frowns deeper. He goes to make a fist with his hand, but when Bucky pushes it gently away, he gets angry and mutters, "Damn."

He does this too much. 

Anthony forgets how to translate words back from ASL to spoken English the way other non-deaf five-year-olds might forget how to do the reverse. (Curses, he remembers perfectly, and that alone is bound to take years off of Bucky's life.)

His words, when he does use them, always sound jilted and skittish. Monosyllabic and direct, it's like the clown trick with the regurgitated handkerchiefs tied together. The words are knots Anthony can't help but choke on as they come out.

_But they have to come out._

Bucky sighs and moves the apple to the side. "You did apple just fine yesterday, bud. What's wrong today?"

Anthony rolls his eyes and pushes a stray curl out of his face for the fifth time. "Bored."

"You're bored?"

He nods. 

"Bored of hands?"

He shrugs. 

"Bored of me?"

Anthony launches himself across the table and doesn't let go of Bucky for the next hour and a half.

**_Loved._ **

This is that sometimes. 

* * *

Three weeks after his conversation with Nick, Anthony spends a whole day without speaking or signing.

Bucky loses fourteen hours to nothing that day.

* * *

Sometimes, when he reads Anthony stories before bed, he makes Anthony sound out the longest words on the page.

He always does it without hesitation.

* * *

He dreams about a skinny boy in New York City. 

He figures he's been to New York City, as an international assassin. He figures he might have lived in New York City, once, long ago. They live in D.C. now, he knows. Their apartment is in Georgetown and he takes Anthony walking through the cherry blossoms each spring.

But yeah, New York. 

The skinny boy is blond and has very prominent ribs. Bucky doesn't spend too much time thinking about him without the dreams, but sometimes he can't help it. He thinks he might have known the boy after waking up, maybe, but he's lost it now. 

(He's lost a lot by now.) 

He dreams of a city full of smoke and dust and the smell of the ocean and blood and dust in an apartment both too small and hot and too large and cold. Anything vaguely tangible in these dreams collapses in on itself as soon as he focuses too hard on it. Sketchbooks and charcoal fall into rows of automatic rifles and lab tables. Penicillin and cigarettes tumble into cyanide capsules and frozen sleep. 

All these things are on repeat until he can wake up. 

* * *

_Sometimes he doesn't wake up._

* * *

He wants to punch Danvers' face in.

"Look, they're watching you now, alright? I mean, they were watching you before, but they are Big Brother-ing the shit out of you."

Just a little bit. 

He misses the days when Danvers was scared of her own shadow. He misses the days when they thought _he_ was scared of his own shadow. 

(He doesn't really, but sometimes he wishes he did.)

He takes a sip of his coffee ( _when did he get that?_ ) and grimaces, glancing toward the sandbox where Anthony is trying to get the attention of a redheaded child at least twice his size. "Why should I believe that?"

He knows why he should believe this. 

He lives in an apartment building owned by SHIELD that is full of SHIELD operatives. He has to report to SHIELD daily and turn over all of his written documents to SHIELD. All of anybody he considers friends works at SHIELD and over eighty percent of the people with whom he's interacted with since being released by the HYDRA base have been SHIELD. His therapist is SHIELD. 

He _does_ believe her, but _she_ doesn't need to know that. 

Danvers seems to see this anyway and takes a righteous sip of her coffee, turning to look at Anthony in the sandbox. "Don't ask me stupid questions."

Bucky grimaces. "Why tell me now?"

"You know why," she says, shaking her head. "You're getting worse, Barnes. You're coming apart at the seams, and if you're not careful, you'll unravel all over us."

"That's unusually poetic of you."

"They are now _actively_ looking for reasons to prove that you are an unfit guardian. The whole 'brainwahsed assassin' bit isn't working like it used to and now they're looking for admissible proof."

"Admissible in court?" Bucky didn't know how he'd hold up in family court against a secret spy organization. 

Thankfully, Carol shakes her head. "Admissible to the Counsel."

"It was the Counsel's idea to let me keep him in the first place, wasn't it?"

It was. It was a highly controversial idea at that, but no one really seemed to mention it anymore. 

_No one except for Fury and Coulson._

"No one ever _liked_ the plan of allowing you to keep him, but they thought it would help de-condition you."

The red-headed boy is frowning at whatever Anthony is messing with in the sand. The situation doesn't look unfriendly enough for Bucky to intervene, but it's a close thing.

"They told me from the beginning that they never expected the Soldier to go away completely," He says, trying to pretend that that matters. "They knew I might never get rid of him."

"They did know that, but they thought the baby would make you less prone to using him," Carol supplies, as if it's that simple. "Now the baby's a kid, and you're no better than you were five years ago."

He doesn't think that that's fair, but he doesn't know how to deny it without lying. 

"I've improved in some places," he says, pathetically grappling the same way he did with Fury. He should really make a list of _Why My Kid Shouldn't Be Taken Away From Me_ in the times between people trying to take his kid away from him. 

It's that or knitting for his weekly hobby, and it seems much more productive to try to keep a kid around to knit _for_.  

Danvers just looks sad now, which is an emotion he didn't know she was capable of. "You can't deny that you're regressing. You've been ticking off all of their boxes on the 'Bucky Barnes Is Fucked Up' list one by one."

He doesn't know what to address first. "There's a list?"

She scoffs. "Of course there's a list," she says as she shoves her available hand in front of him, listing accusations by the finger. "Obsessive behaviors, catatonic episodes, social isolation, anxiety, paranoia, hostility towards others—"

" _Alright_ , I get it."

He doesn't get it. 

Well, he does, but he doesn't _want_ to. He _wants_ to go see what the hell Anthony is doing in the sand, because Anthony always creates beautiful things and he doesn't doubt that that ends with sand. (This is true.) He _wants_ to take the the knife strapped to his thigh on the inside of his pants and shove it through the frowning mouth of the red-headed kid about to dump a bucket of sand all over Anthony. (This isn't normal.) He wants to grab Carol and Anthony and take them to an overpass on the highway and hide there in a box and a shopping cart for a few days to get SHIELD off his trail. (This is just irrational.)

He looks down at his hands. He knows that beneath his gloves one hand has blood flowing through it and one had is battery-operated. He knows both hands are covered in blood and can't be cleaned by any amount of diapers changed or sand cleaned from little brown curls and big brown eyes. 

When he looks back up, Anthony is gone. 


	4. I Knew a Man (Part One)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part One 
> 
> AKA - How to Fail a Psych Eval When Trying to Rejoin the United States Army (Even Though Technically Freezing to Death isn't an Honorable Discharge When You Don't Die): A Saga By Steve Rogers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why not have a POV switch!
> 
> Also, these two parts are just going to be something of an interlude and skim over the development that happened with Steve and Tony during the parts before the first Avengers. Granted, I plan to make them as worthwhile as I can, but please go into this knowing that that is all I intend it to be. (Reminder that I will have many flashbacks and exposition-y stuff when I can get to it, and that this is part of a collection which will involve all that good stuff.)
> 
> Also, I know I keep opening chapters with dialogue, but once things start to flow better and chapters start taking place after one another, there will be more variety. (I also just like doing it, so there's that, I guess.)
> 
> You guys deserve a lot more than this considering how long you've waited, but this is all I feel like I can give you for plot purposes. :( Sorry about that. 
> 
> But hey! This stuff also serves as characterization for Steve and Tony so yay for that right??
> 
> Let me know how I did, and what you want to see in the future!

> **_REQUEST FOR READMITTANCE_ **
> 
> **_Applicant: Steven Grant Rogers_ **
> 
> **_Discharge Status: [see attachment]_ **
> 
> **_Branch: Army_ **
> 
> **_Title (former): [see attachment]_ **
> 
> **_Status: Pending Psychiatric Evalution_ **
> 
> **_Justification for Status: [see attached file]_**
> 
>  

* * *

 

_"I-I know . . . I know how hard this must be for you, Captain. You are allowed to stop the session early if you wish. Just know that I . . . Well, you have to understand . . . I have no choice but to count that as an incomplete session."_

_"I understand, ma'am."_

_"I am very sorry about all of this."_

_"Why?"_

_"I understand you would like to serve again."_

_"I would."_

_"And you have no choice but to complete these sessions in order to do so."_

_"That's what they tell me."_

_"Right, well, you understand, then—"_

_"I get no credit for incomplete sessions."_

_"Right, so it would just be—"_

_"Wasted time?"_

_"I have no desire to traumatize you more than I have to, Captain Rogers."_

_"I don't think you can do any worse than the Nazis, ma'am."_

 

* * *

 

Steve wakes up in Hell. 

It's only what he can assume to be Hell, anyway, thinking back to a sermon Father Fitzgerald gave in the middle of an August heatwave when he was a kid. It was one of the rare Sundays he was able to convince Sister Cathleen to take him to Mass with her while Ma was at work. It was a hot day and she smelled like roses and sweat.

He remembers clambering onto the bench beside her, having to pause halfway up the climb to catch his breath. In the end, his feet dangled over the edge, barely skimming the ground. 

He remembers barely having caught his breath by the time Father actually starts talking about Hell. (His Ma told him enough about Hell, though, and Steve is not a real fan of what he's heard.) It's sinfully hot in the church already so the sermon seems redundant.

Or, that's what Steve's anticipating anyway. 

_"On the day of reckoning, Heaven will rain fire and stones. On the day of reckoning, Heaven shall scorch us with, and only with the mercy of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior will we survive to see His life. The rest shall freeze in the pits of Hell."_

_So_ , Steve thinks, blinking awake to the darkness of his downed ship: _This is Hell._  

He's strapped to his chair. He's pretty sure his leg is broken, but he can't move because he's still strapped down. His hands are blue and frosted to the steering mechanism, and they're numb when he breaks them away. _Good,_ he thinks, turning them over in front of his face.  _Looked like a world of hurt._

And it would have been, probably. But he was also pretty sure that he was supposed to be dead, so he was hesitant to put any money on anything.

His head was pounding and he could feel his skin trying to stitch itself back together at his temple. There's only the barest amount of light. He knows if he were a normal person he wouldn't be able to see at all, and the more he looks at himself, the more he starts to think that that might have been a good thing. 

His seatbelt is completely iced over where it attaches the two straps and he doesn't have enough sensation in his fingers to claw at it right now.

He wonders what woke him.

He wonders how long he's been here.

He wonders if everybody thinks he's dead.

 _You are dead,_ he reminds himself.  _You are dead, and this is Hell, and you are going to sit in this seat and die for the rest of your life._

I thought I was already dead?

_You are._

If I'm dead, how can I die for the rest of my life?

_This is the fight you want to pick **right now**?_

You got a puzzle or something I can look at?

_We don't have board games in Hell._

Well, that's a damn shame.

 

* * *

 

_"But you **were** awake?"_

_"I'm not sure. My mind could have been awake. I could have been just dreaming."_

_"You were found with your seatbelt still on and your hands on the wheel."_

_"I took them off the wheel before the water came. I'm not sure what I did after."_

_"Before?"_

_"I'm sorry?"_

_"You said 'before the water came'."_

_"Yes, ma'am."_

_"You were awake when the water came into the ship?"_

_" . . ."_

 

* * *

 

We were in a Depression before I got into the War. 

_I'm well aware of that._

Are you God?

_If I am, nobody's told me yet._

I don't think you'd make a good God. 

_Well, it's a good thing you aren't the brains of this outfit, then, isn't it?_

That's not very nice. 

 _I'm not in a very good mood, forgive me_.

What's got you so wound up?

_Well, we **are** about to drown to death, I reckon. It's starting to put a damper on my mood. _

Drown? How do you figure?

_You hear that screamin' the ships doin' over there?_

(Steve hadn't been thinking about that over the sounds of his internal dialogue, but now that he was, he could hear it.)

_I figure that's a glacier movin' 'gainst the outside of the ship's jacket. Only two things can be happenin' if a glacier moves._

We could be being rescued. 

_Or we could be sinkin'. When'd you land here?_

I don't know. 

_How long've you been here?_

I don't know.

_Are they sendin' people to come 'n' find you?_

I hope so. 

_Definitely not the brains of the outfit._

 

* * *

 

_"Jesus Christ."_

" _Now I don't think there's any need for that kind of language, ma'am."_

_"I'm sorry! I just . . . You were **awake**."_

_"I don't know. Maybe I wasn't. Maybe I thought of this all when I was in that coma."_

_"Captain Rogers . . ."_

_"The coma's the only thing that makes sense."_

 

* * *

 

Ow. 

_You're going to start complaining **now**?_

Where am I?

_How'm I supposed to know? You've got your eyes closed._

Are you God?

_We've had this conversation before._

You don't sound like God.

_Think your brain's got frostbite._

Am I dead?

_You hear all that racket? You think they'd be making such a fuss over you if you were dead?_

You told me I was gonna die to death.

**_That_** _you remember._

 

* * *

 

 "Oh my God! He's- I think he's waking up!"

 

* * *

 

_"You're not going to clear me, are you?"_

 

* * *

 

Steve sighs. He feels like the SHIELD emblem serves no greater purpose than to mock him at this point.  

He doesn't like SHIELD. He's still a little irked that Peggy would get behind something like SHIELD in the first place, but he knows he ought to trust her judgment until he knows more about it. But isn't that just the problem with this whole damned century?

Steve knows nothing about it. 

Nothing more than what was in the dossier, anyway, and that was only six pages long. 

_A page for every decade. What more do you want? A bible dedicated to all the years you spent as a popsicle?_

(That voice in his head never really went away either. Doctor Ida calls them 'intrusive thoughts' but Steve thinks 'jackass' does just fine in the privacy of his own head.)

"Penny for your thoughts?"

And Nick Fury. Steve's not so keen on Nick Fury.

His Ma taught him manners, though, so he straightens out his hunched shoulders and offers the man his hand to shake, which he does. "Just waiting for my discharge papers from Doctor Ida. My last session was yesterday and if I need to talk to the Reserves office, I'd like to do it as soon as possible."

Fury nods, shaking the large envelope in his other hand. "I believe I'm your carrier pigeon for the evening."

Steve raises an eyebrow but takes the proffered envelope. 

Fury shrugs. "Joan was one of my recruits. She was a little nervous to deliver these herself, I think."

Steve's heart plummets.  

He nods. "Our last few sessions didn't go very well," he says plainly, trying to not think too badly on Doctor Ida. "She did what she thought was right and I have to respect that."

Fury's face remains neutral. "After a waiting period and a few in-between sessions, you can try for another evaluation."

"I might." Steve thinks for a minute. "Thank you for these. I hope it was no trouble."

"No trouble at all, Captain."

Steve doesn't correct him, figuring there's will be a whole publicity thing about his title once they tell the public he's actually alive. 

He's halfway down the length of the corridor when Fury calls out to him. "Cap! Wait a second!"

He jogs to meet him, and in a few short strides, they meet just outside of the middle. "Yes?"

"If you still want to serve, there's a place here for you, if you want it."

Steve considers this for a moment.  _It's not like there's a place for you anywhere else._

"But I didn't pass the test?"

"There's no test for what _I_ have in mind."

I don't like this.

_You don't have to like it. You don't have a lot of other options here._

"What _did_ you have in mind?"

Fury looks like he's biting back a smile. "I'm not entirely sure yet," he admits. "See, I have this idea . . ."

 

* * *

 

> **_REQUEST FOR READMITTANCE_ **
> 
> **_Applicant: Steven Grant Rogers_ **
> 
> **_Discharge Status: [see attachment]_ **
> 
> **_Branch: Army_ **
> 
> **_Title (former): [see attachment]_ **
> 
> **_Status: DENIED_ **
> 
> **_Justification for Status: [see attached file]_ **

**_[REDACTED] Note: Mr. Rogers is, under no circumstance, to serve as an active or inactive agent without extensive therapy and total consensus from a roundtable of field psychologists. It is recommended that Mr. Rogers seek extensive counseling for his time served during the Second World War and his life during the Great Depression. Mr. Rogers obviously suffers from PTSD, depression, acute-onset OCD, and more than likely an undiagnosed panic disorder. Mr. Rogers did not submit himself with full disclosure for a diagnosis. ~~May God Help Us All~~. [REDACTED]_ **

* * *

_ **Steven Grant Rogers** _

_Avengers Initiative: RECOMMENDED_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did I do? What would like to see more of from Steve going forward? What would you like to see in part two, the Tony chapter?


	5. I Knew a Man (Part Two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part Two
> 
> AKA - Finding Yourself in the Style of "Eat. Pray. Love." Without Eating Much, Praying Terribly, and with Hate: A Guidebook by Tony Stark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: some slightly graphic descriptions of violence here in the torture scenes (note: nothing too bloody and nothing specific, but many allusions to situations some may find distressing or at least vaguely uncomfortable); child abuse is alluded to a few times; other possibly distressing things . . .
> 
> I'm really sorry I couldn't be more helpful with the warning, but I'm not sure about the parts of this that would be regarded as triggering. If you have any questions or don't feel safe with the risk of reading this, I can just as easily summarize this entire chapter in the comments. (Please don't put yourself in a bad place for this fic, because there are going to be so many fluffy, good, cute parts later you don't even KNOW.)
> 
> Remember that I love you all and that I am doing my best.

 

> **_DOB: May 29, 1991 at 2:58 pm_ **
> 
> **_Sex: Male_ **
> 
> **_Weight: 7.0 lbs_ **
> 
> **_Allergies: N/A_ **
> 
> **_Illnesses/Ailments/Conditions:_ **
> 
> **_Jaundice; patient exhibited signs two days following birth. Treatment: Light Therapy — succcesful._ **
> 
> **_Heart murmur; patient exhibited signs of a slight murmur in-utero. Treatment plan: observe._**
> 
> **_Separation Anxiety; patient is prone to violent outbursts and/or nervous episodes when separated from ~~primary~~ guardians._ **
> 
> **_Notes:_ **
> 
> **_~~Patient did not cry or make sounds until three days after birth when being removed from his light box.~~  _ **
> 
> **_~~Patient had excessive difficulty latching and was switched to a bottle after seven weeks.~~ Patient was switched to formula after four months.  _ **
> 
> **_EMERGENCY CONTACT PERSON/S_ **
> 
> **_MR. Obidiah Stane - Legal Guardian_ **
> 
> **_DIRECTOR Margaret Carter - Legal Guardian_ **
> 
>  

* * *

****

_"Anthony? What's the matter, darling? What's wrong?"_

_"I want my abba."_

_"Sweetheart . . . I'm_ so _sorry, but he's not here right now."_

_"Where is he? I want him."_

_"He's . . . away."_

_"He will be coming back."_

_"I don't think so, darling. I'm so sorry. But I'm here, and I promise that I will not be going anywhere."_

_"Good. He'll wanna meet you when he comes."_

 

* * *

 

Tony's problem isn't that he doesn't know how he got here.

(I mean, he doesn't, but that's not the most concerning thing at the moment.)

 _That_ problem gets knocked down a few pegs when he takes his first breath after waking up. 

Or, when he tries to, anyway.

The gaping hole in his chest put a damper on that pretty quickly. 

"I would refrain from taking deep breaths at the moment if I were you."

Somewhere between his head and his lungs screaming at him to do  _something_ he registers a calm, deep voice chiding him. 

He can't speak. He can't breathe. He feels like screaming but knows that he can't or won't because _oh **god** hurts hurts so much pain **painpain**_

"Mister Stark?" The voice is closer now, or just considerably louder. "Mister Stark, can you hear me?"

"Hurts," he grits out. This turns out to be a mistake. It turns out that when you move parts of your body, other parts that are connected to, that part move as well. 

It's all _very_ fascinating. 

The voice chuckles. "I imagine it must. You're still a growing boy, after all. But I'm afraid it was this or death, Mister Stark."

At this point, he's not sure he knows what _death_ is, but anything has to be better than  _this_. Death has got to be some sick relief from whatever spot in Hell he's apparently earned himself.

Because that's got to be what this is, right? 

Hell?

Beyond the hole in his chest, he can feel the stiff, punishing heat of the room. He can feel how whatever is beneath him isn't a bed at all, but some sort of uneven, sharp bedrock that juts into his tender spine. He can feel his skin — both the chest parts and the not-chest-parts — stretch and pull unnaturally. Later, he'll understand that it was a mixture of blood and sweat drying on his skin, but for now, everything just feels like some sort of clawing ache.

Distantly, he thinks he hears a heart monitor pulling steadily along.

 _Weird,_ he thinks. Because it can't be his. 

Because he's dead. 

_This is Hell._

 

* * *

 

_"I need to go to the doctor."_

_"Tony, darling, you just need to breathe."_

_"Peggy, back off. Boy needs to get over these_ episodes _sooner or later. He won't get to it if you keep coddling him like that."_

_"I **will** have you removed, Obadiah. This is a courtesy visit."_

_"I want my **abba**. _ Where _is my **abba**?"_

_"Darling, I'm sorry but—"_

_"What is this 'baba' business he goes on about, anyway?"_

_" **Abba**."_

_"It's the Hebrew word for 'father'."_

_"Howard wasn't Jewish."_

_"He's not talking about Howard, you twit! Help me get him down!"_

 

* * *

 

"This isn't Hell," the voice informs him. "This is Afghanistan."

 

* * *

 

_"Tony, you have to talk to someone about these episodes."_

_"Why?"_

_"Because I'm not sure how much your little body can take, poppet."_

_"Will I die?"_

_"Not for a very, very long time."_

_"Did Abba die?"_

_"I . . . I don't know."_

* * *

 

"How old are you, Mister Stark?"

"Yinsen, how many times do I have to start telling you to stop calling me that?"

"It _is_ your name."

"People who've had their hands in my chest get to call me Tony."

"I hope you haven't developed a coalition."

 

* * *

 

_"Boy, you've got to stop this 'abby' business you go on about. Peggy tells me you're something of a sensitive child, but Howard wouldn't have wanted a pussy for a son. You see all those people down there? Those machines their building? Your father and I built all that from scratch. And now he's . . . He just . . . You know, your father used to tell me . . . Used to say, 'Stark men, they're made of iron'. Think he really believed it, too . . . Now, hold still."_

 

* * *

 

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

The first time he refuses them, they beat him. They dislocate one and a half of his shoulders, his nose, and maybe his jaw. A few teeth come loose that Yinsen later has to yank out with an old dirty pair of forceps. Countless bruises bloom on his body for days, like the blood just gets tired of clotting itself together. His scabs take forever to scar, too, but that's nothing compared to the magnet. 

He can feel the magnet cave into a dent the size of the head on a dime and it's the only time he screams for them. 

 

* * *

 

_"Darling, if you keep asking for Steve stories, I might not have any left to tell you one day."_

 

* * *

 

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

The second time he refuses them, it's lingchi. Not to kill, he doesn't think, but it's a close thing. They start with cuts to the soles of his feet. It's nothing deep — little, slanted slices into his skin like papercuts or cardboard scrapes. They make quick work of his heels and the arches of his feet and slow down when it comes to the webbing of his toes and the backs of his ankles. They keep the pattern until they make it to his chest, and they hesitate. 

The crew working on him that day speak Mandarin and Japanese, and even though he only catches half of what they're saying, they come to an agreement quite quickly on what to do with the magnet. 

He gives them nothing in return. 

 

* * *

 

_"I don't think that Bucky would appreciate me telling you that particular story, love."_

_"Who's Bucky?"_

 

* * *

 

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

The third time he refuses them . . . that's when the water comes. 

He thought the point of the desert was that there was no water. He thought the point was that you were supposed to feel the dryness in your bones as nature's water cycle tried to suck you dry for the raining season. Tony thinks (after the water comes, of course, because even he isn't that multi-faceted) that the single most ridiculous thing would be for him to die _right here, right now_. 

 **Tony Stark Drowns In Afghanistan** —  **Dehydrated, Miles Away From Ocean!**

 _So,_ he decides, floating in a basin of dirty water, vomit, and rust. 

He refuses to die there, so he doesn't. 

 

* * *

 

_"When Bucky fell off the train, did he die?"_

_"Yes."_

_"An' Cap died in the ocean?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Are they ever going to come back?"_

 

* * *

 

Yinsen tells him the story of how he was supposed to die.  

It's on a night when it's too cold in the cave to light a fire. They're breathing heavily in the darkness, trying to find any heat in their body to exhale into their hands. The battery doesn't facilitate great circulation, so his hands went numb hours before the sun fully sets, but he can't complain. 

They're lying on the fake blueprints Tony drew up to get the materials he wanted. He wants to laugh. Says that if he dies on these, it'll be the most poetic way anyone's ever died on anything before.

Yinsen laughs. "It was something like an auction, I think. When I refused them, they raided my home, bid everything I owed to their comrades, and then to the people in my village. They took my family and sat them in front of the crowd. They twisted my bedsheet into a rope and tried to hang me with it."

Tony laughs. "What's so poetic about that?"

Yinsen says, "Everyone had come to watch me die that day. Before they put the rope around my neck, I said that I only had forgiveness left. They pushed me off the footstool, and the branch broke."

Tony says, "And?"

Yinsen says, "It was an olive tree."

Tony says, "You win."

 

* * *

 

_"Uncle Obie says that Cap was a hero."_

_"He was."_

_"Uncle Obie says that Bucky was a hero, too."_

_"He was."_

_"Uncle Obie says that Howard tried to be a hero but that it didn't work out."_

_"We call that a tragedy, dear. Now go wash your hands before lunch."_

 

* * *

 

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

They wait until the fourth time he refuses them and then they give it a go. 

It's nothing like the "sessions" he's had before. Every time before they would bathe him and dress him and lull him into some sort of security before ripping it from him. They would have teams rotating in and out over a period of what must have been days of putting him through a thorough physical and psychological wringer. They never spoke to him directly. They never let him sleep. 

They were _methodical_.

They were _organized_. 

Until they fill him with sand. 

The translator says, "So, what'll it be?"

And Tony says, "Fuck you."

And then—

And then _silence_. 

Tony still doesn't know how the captor knows what he's saying. Tony doesn't know if it's something in his face that gives it away. He doesn't know if his tone speaks of a special sort of petulantly defiant type of  _no_ that there's no mistaking it for a universal sign of  _I will not be building you a bomb today, good sir_ or what. He doesn't know, but the next thing he _does_ know, his head is bouncing off of a fallen piece of wood and there's sand in his eyes. There's a boot crunching into his temple the next minute as the translator chuckles a little and tells him to lie still if he knows what's good for him. 

He does, but squirms a little out of spite, anyway. 

There are orders barked and words exchanged, of which, Tony only understands a bit of the Farsi that Yinsen had taught him and a few Turkish expletives. There is more movement and more noise than he'd heard in he didn't know how long. Nothing is still except for the steady pressure of the boot digging into his skull. 

He can hear his pulse like this. He can hear the blood rush by his ear or his brain and he has a distant urge to wave hello at it. 

It doesn't make sense, but, Tony thinks while staring down at least fifty copies of the same two pairs of shoes: nothing here really does, does it?

 _I'm gonna die here,_ he thinks, not for the first time.  _I'm gonna die surrounded by black leather and human rights violations._

(And then he cheekily adds to himself:  _Well, not like that.)_

Before that thought can get any traction, though, there's a tight grip on his ankles that flips him onto his back. There are knees resting their full weight on his wrists and somebody straddling his torso. Suddenly, there are two hands framing the sides of his face and a funnel being shoved into his stupid mouth. 

He gags as the opening stabs at the back of his throat. He vomits a little and shakes violently, trying to get a purchase on something, trying to  _fight_. 

But all there is is sand.

There's sand worming its way into his ears and throwing itself into his eyes. He's on a wood board, but even that feels like it's sinking farther into the ground surrounding them. There's nothing keeping him there in that moment except for all of the hands on him, holding him out and vulnerable. He thinks he ought to look like some parody of Jesus laid out on the board like this. 

When they start to pour the sand down the funnel, he stops thinking much at all. 

 

* * *

 

_Tony hates holidays._

_Aunt Peggy is always working during them because she earns something called a 'salary' and has to make something called a 'living'. She gave away all of her Thanksgivings and Halloweens and Easters and Martin Luther King Jr. Days and all the others so that she can have the weekends to spend with Tony, which he guesses is a plus. The only part he doesn't like is that he has to spend all those days with Uncle Obie, and Uncle Obie is always much meanier and slower on those days. He always tells Tony those boring stories about Howard and Maria until Mr. Jarvis has to come and tuck him in for the night._

_One good thing, Tony supposes, is that Aunt Peggy always gets him for Christmases._

_Christmas with Aunt Peggy is always amazing. He doesn't know how to describe it, exactly, but it's just always the best. Aunt Peggy never answers the phone for work, she's always there to tuck him in and tell him Steve and Bucky stories, and Mr. Jarvis actually gives him hugs when he asks for them. Aunt Peggy always gets him the best gifts, too. Tools for his secret workshop, broken cars and electronics for him to fix, a_ cat _that one time . . . It's just a good time._

 _They have a schedule for the week leading up to Christmas. They spend two days at home in their pajamas (except for Mr. Jarvis, who Tony is_ almost _convinced only wears suits and tails) at Aunt Peggy's house in D.C. The last night, they visit a synagogue just outside of Georgetown to do nothing but sit in silence for an hour. The next day, they fly into JFK to spend the night in Brooklyn and go to Mass that same evening at an old church Tony can't pronounce the name of. After that, they always fly somewhere warm._

_Aunt Peggy likes warm places. She likes anywhere that has a beach and is as close to the southern hemisphere without crossing it as she can get. Tony doesn't understand the need, really. Every year, she tells him about how the beaches where she's from are cold and all smell like rain. She tells him about how she just loves the sun and the warmth and the brightness of white sand and tropical sun. She tells him, "Just because your mother was Italian doesn't mean you should take the sun for granted."_

_If it's just between Tony and himself, though? He's just not a fan of the beach part. He loves the sun and the ocean and all._

_Really, it's just the sand he's not a fan of._

_Gets everywhere, if you're not careful with it._

 

* * *

 

He can't breathe.

It's worse than the waterboarding in some ways. He has no guarantee he'll be able to breathe once they let him up; he can feel the burn of the sand in his lungs. There's grit in his throat because he couldn't help but swallow some of it at the beginning. The funnel has definitely chipped a tooth or two, and they're starting to kick dirt over him. 

 _They're going to bury me alive,_ he thinks. 

_Good._

 

* * *

 

_Tony doesn't think he really believes in God, but Aunt Peggy doesn't either, so he knows it's alright._

_They're supposed to be praying or contemplating God or whatever, but Tony doesn't really buy the whole thing so he just sits there._

_He doesn't even really have anything to pray_ for, so he doesn't.

_People here are as busy and buzzing as they are quiet. It's a tight-knit neighborhood, wherever they are, and everybody here seems to know everybody else. They're kind, though. They're a kind enough people to recognize whatever kind of lonely that follows him and Aunt Peggy around. They have to decline at least three different offers for a homecooked meal before they leave._

_It's nice, though._

_Really._

_He sits and stares at the one lit candle on the menorah and smiles._

_He thinks._

 

* * *

 

At night, Tony thinks. 

It's rare for him to fall deep enough into sleep to dream, so he doesn't.

The nights are cold and silent and filled with blackness.

They're _safe_.

 

* * *

  

_Tony doesn't believe in the god he's supposed to pray to in the synagogue and he doesn't believe in the one he's supposed to pray to at Mass, either._

_He listens to the songs and the preaching. He listens to the whispered gossip and sobbed prayers. Catholics, he's noticed, are always much sadder around Christmastime._

_It's nice._

_Not the sadness, but the quiet and the reverie. It's all about forgiveness here, he's realized. Repentance is begged for at every turn, like all of these people have suddenly come to the senses of their mortality._

_Maybe they have._

_(Tony won't for ten more years in the middle of a cave.)_

_Instead of that, Tony sits in the back of the pews studying an odd set of scuff marks on the bench next to him. Peggy's in confession and it's not like he has anything better to do._

__He sits and stares at the saints they have immortalized in pieces of broken glass._ _

__He tries to pray._ _

 

* * *

 

He breathes.

He thinks of Cap's shield.

He thinks of Bucky's gun.

He thinks of the buttons on Aunt Peggy's blouse.

 

* * *

 

_"Are you there, God? It's me, Tony Stark."_

 

* * *

 

He thinks of Obie's soldering iron melting his hands together. 

He thinks of the sound of Yinsen's laughter when Tony blinks himself awake to keep watch on his shift, the bell that's placed into his hands to ring if there's trouble.  

He thinks of the sound of Yinsen's sobs when he's told of the firebombing of his village, his hands shaking around a very reflective rosary.

 

* * *

 

_"You seem to be a really shitty parent. You're a father, right? **The** Father? I had a father once, I think."_

 

* * *

 

He thinks about metal planes flying into metal buildings, wonders if maybe he wouldn't be here otherwise. 

He thinks about a filing in a tooth they pulled out when he had asked for an extra bowl of broth. 

He thinks about bleeding all over the floor of the desert, about what he really loses every time they drain him dry.

 

* * *

 

_"Before, I was halfway into your shtick. I could get behind it: the wrath and the love. But the forgiveness thing . . . That was never really yours, was it? I guess I didn't notice that all you're good for is sending in your son to clean up your messes."_

 

* * *

 

Tony doesn’t think he’s Jesus.

His ego isn’t quite _that_ big, really.  

It would be some comfort, he thinks. He _did_ read the whole Bible, after all — he knows how _that_ story worked itself out. The ending, the kinks, the fire, the brimstone, the hope, the torment, etc. 

(He shares his humor with Yinsen that, of course, most of the Bible took place in a desert, too.)

Sometimes, when he's laid out at night, he'll cross his legs and unfold his arms like the day with the sand. He pretends the hole in his chest is a nail. He pretends the car battery it's attached to is his cross. Sometimes, he pretends that he is the son of no one in a desert, made only for his abilities and left to rot when the going got tough. 

They aren't good thoughts. He knows that it's not the way he's supposed to be thinking because it's not encouraging. It's not what will get him out of this hell hole. It's not what will save him because _—_

Jesus didn't make it out of his story alive.

(Well.

Not really, anyway.)

Jesus succumbed to his fate. 

He prayed to his father. 

_save me save me save me_

He prayed to his idol.

_love me love me love me_

He prayed to the feet standing at the altar of his death — his murder.

_forgive them, father, for they know not what they do._

 

* * *

 

 _In Afghanistan, he prays for death without praying to anybody in particular._  

  

* * *

 

He doesn't know how long it takes him to think of it. 

He's grown something of a what _could_ be considered a beard by someone not cruel enough to judge an eighteen-year-old stuck in a cave on his shaving prowess. (Shaving with broken shards of glass and rusty straight razors doesn't lend itself to intricate design techniques and gentle grooming.) 

He's always dirty, anyway, so it's not like it matters at this point. 

He's suffered three infections around the magnet and one week of temporarily losing his vision _because of reasons_. There's a pain in his arm starting up so bad that Yinsen has already started giving him Civil War doctor talks about it. 

 

* * *

 

_"If it healed wrong or there is an infection, it could kill you. The beatings don't help, of course, but there is nothing we can do about those until you agree to build your machine of death."_

_"I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death; I am not on his payroll."_

_"I think Miss Millay would've objected to me cutting your arm off."_

 

* * *

 

But yeah, he thinks of it all anyway.

He doesn't dream, so he thinks.

He thinks of _metal_.  

And that's all he needs. 

 

* * *

 

_"That could power your heart for fifty lifetimes!"_

_"Yeah . . . or something big for fifteen minutes."_

 

* * *

 

Finding out it's Obie . . . Well, it puts some things into perspective for him.

 

* * *

 

_"You got a family?"_

_"Yes, and I will see them when I leave here. And you, Stark?"_

_"No."_

_"So you're a man who has everything . . . and nothing."_

 

* * *

 

Killing Obie wasn't _supposed_ to be part of that perspective . . . 

Nobody's perfect. 

 

* * *

 

_"I am Iron Man."_

 

* * *

 

The press conference hurts.

Everything hurts. 

The suit pinches and the arc reactor itches and pulls and he just feels too small  _not enough too little the only father you can remember wanted you **dead** —_

"That's quite a head on your shoulders."

Tony almost dies right there in his living room, if only out of shock. "Uncle Nick?"

JARVIS says nothing (some sort of EMP or dampening device) but the lighting increases enough so that he can see Nick standing in front of the couch with a deep frown on his face. 

Tony is too tired to be angry. "What are you doing here?"

Nick does look at him then, long and soft just like he did when Tony graduated from undergrad. "I'm sorry I didn't come see you after you got back home."

Tony straightens up his back. He had assumed they would have done this over the phone like any other self-respecting adults, but he knows Nick still sees him as a kid and probably was concerned about his emotions or other such garbage. He wants to talk about that. He wants to tantrum, just a little, because he is angry, if only distantly. He had Pepper and Rhodey, sure, but with Nick and Aunt Peggy MIA when he came back . . . And then Obie . . .

"Did you know?" he asks, moving to sit on the couch. (He means to gracefully lower himself, but he ends up collapsing completely.)

Nick sighs and sits across from him. "Did I know about Obadiah selling weapons under the table? Or did I know that he kept selling after you shut down production?"

Tony feels a heat rise on the back of his neck. "Oh, there's a committee for all that bullshit. All offices and branches of the United States government will be searched and questioned for that all the way down to _the Post Office_. Don't worry, you'll get a phone call." He turns and fixes a glare on Nick, whose face sits like stone again. "I'm asking if you _knew_ that he tried to have me killed. I'm asking if you knew where I was that _whole time_ and just let me _rot_ there. I'm asking if you let good Americans die on a mission— _Three months!_ And I come home to you, sitting in front of my fireplace all cozy _just_ _because_ _you can_?"

"You think I would let you die? On my watch?"

"THAT DOESN'T ANSWER MY QUESTION!"

Silence. 

He needs to calm down. There's a cold numbness making its way up his left arm (which he knows he needs to check out) but he can't focus on that. There's too much  _angry_ and  _hurt_ and  _bitter_ buzzing around in his head. There's a whole hornet's nest of repressed aggression trying to convince him to chuck the marble coffee table at Nick's stupid, half-blind face. 

Nick swallows. "The answer to your question is no: I didn't know where you were. I searched for you that whole time. I never gave up; I never rested on you. I rode my teams as hard as I could— Hell, I think I even tried to break the Patriot Act on you!" Nick reaches for him, puts steady hands on his shoulders and kneads them with his calloused fingers. "Kid, I promise, I haven't left your corner. 

"I'm sorry about Stane, I really am. I knew he was a rat bastard, but I swear, that's all I knew."

Tony's not quite crying, but he can't deny the knot in his throat and the wetness in his eyes. "Why weren't you _there for me_?" Nick breaks then, too, and tugs Tony through the distance between them. He pushes Tony's forehead onto his shoulder, but Tony keeps speaking, barely muffled by the fabric of his shirt. "Rhodey got me, and Potts and Hogan were on the tarmac, but _you_ weren't there for _me_."

Nick doesn't say anything then. 

They don't do this. 

This is something Peggy does when he's upset because she wears neutral perfume and it's something of a Pavlovian response to him at this point. When he's upset, she'll pull his head to rest in the crook of her neck and just let him  _breathe._ Sometimes, she'll rub behind his ears or sing him songs from during her time in the War.

But Peggy isn't here right now and Obadiah is dead (not that he was ever a source of comfort) and Carol's probably filling out paperwork and Rhodey is in traffic.

_They don't do this._

But they're doing it right now, apparently.

They stay like that for some time. He shakes, but he doesn't cry, and eventually, his breathing slows and evens out to a point Nick has deemed safe to let go. 

They sit separately for some time, too. They haven't done this since long before he graduated, but he knows he won't mention that if they ever speak of this again. It's not a comfortable silence, but it's really not doing any harm, either. They're close enough to touch, but they don't, and Tony can't figure out if that's supposed to be tragic or not before Nick speaks again.  

"You've got some head on your shoulders, kid."

"You said that."

Nick chuckles a bit. "I did. I mean it. You're not just 'Think Tank in Washington' smart. You know that, right?"

Tony actually considers this for a moment. "I'm not an ideas man, Uncle Nick. I like to fix things."

It's a bold-faced, outright lie, but Nick seems to think about it. 

"You ever think of fixing the world?"

 

* * *

 

_"Don't waste your life, Stark."_

 

* * *

 

When he finally _does_ see Peggy, she yells at him for thirty-six minutes before hugging him for twelve. 

 

* * *

 

_"I am Iron Man."_

 

* * *

 

Pepper calls him for months in the middle of the night just to see that he's still where she left him.

She'll never admit to nightmares, but he knows what that sort of breathlessness sounds like when left unchecked. 

(He can't judge — sometimes he calls twice as much for the same reason.)

 

* * *

 

_"Tony, it's not a matter of **wanting** anything from you, exactly. See, I just . . . Well . . . I had this idea . . ."_

 

* * *

 

Rhodey lives with him for about two months after he comes home. 

It helps more than he'll ever admit — having Rhodey there. He knows what the magazines think about someone of Rhodey's age being so closely linked to someone like him, but he doesn't care and neither does Rhodey. 

(Some days, they run issues that are half-correct in their assumptions: he and Rhodey do sleep in the same bed every night. However, he _always_ makes sure to call in and clarify that it was his time spent being tortured in Afghanistan that has made him require an Old Fashioned Human Teddy Bear, discretion to boners implied.)

 

* * *

 

_"I am Iron Man."_

 

* * *

 

It's decided (without him, specifically) that the only human being in the world allowed to drive Tony anywhere for the rest of ever is Happy.

Tony, obviously, has no objections.

 

* * *

 

_"No, I don't want to join your super secret boy-band."_

 

* * *

 

Coulson sends him a basket of socks and repurposes a Get Well Soon card that Tony had made him the time he got shot when Tony was in fourth grade. 

 

* * *

 

_"I am Iron Man."_

 

* * *

 

When Coulson shows up in New York, looking like he'd rather be jumping off of the building than to talk inside of it, Tony's ready. 

 

* * *

 

_"You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message!"_

 

* * *

 

. . . Or so he'd like to believe.

 

* * *

 

 ** _"I am Iron Man."_**  

 

* * *

 

**_DOB: May 29, 1991, at 2:58 pm_ **

**_Sex: Male_ **

**_Weight: 7.0 lbs_ **

**_Allergies: Basil,_ **

**_Illnesses/Ailments/Conditions:_ **

**_Jaundice; patient exhibited signs two days following birth. Treatment: Light Therapy — successful._ **

**_Heart murmur; patient exhibited signs of a slight murmur in-utero. Treatment plan: observe._ **

**_Separation Anxiety; patient is prone to violent outbursts and/or nervous episodes when separated from ~~primary~~ guardians._ **

**_~~PTSD;~~ [see attached file]_ **

**_~~Vascular Prothetic(?)~~  —> ARC REACTOR-BASED PACEMAKER, ~~palladium core~~ [???]_**

**_Notes:_ **

**_~~Patient did not cry or make sounds until three days after birth when being removed from his light box.~~  _ **

**_~~Patient had excessive difficulty latching and was switched to a bottle after seven weeks.~~ Patient was switched to formula after four months. _ **

**_~~Patient has shown early signs of heavy metal poisoning. Low levels detected in blood. Observation required.~~_ **

**_EMERGENCY CONTACT PERSON/S_ **

**_~~MR. Obidiah Stane - Legal Guardian~~  _ **

**_~~(EX) DIRECTOR Margaret Carter - Legal Guardian~~_ **

**_DIRECTOR Nicholas Fury - Employer_ **

**_~~MISS~~  STARK INDUSTRIES CEO Pepper Potts _ **

* * *

 

_ **Anthony Edward Stark** _

_Avengers Initiative: [see attached file]_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How'd I do? What did you like? What did you not like? What would you like to see going forward?
> 
> Not entirely sure what next chapter's going to be, but it should be here within the next 2-3 weeks!


End file.
